PrepTest 113, Section 2, Question 12
Rosen: One cannot prepare a good meal from(40 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(7 more words not shown)
- AThe creation of(9 more words not shown)
- BNatural resources cannot(7 more words not shown)
- CGood soil is(5 more words not shown)
- DAny society with(8 more words not shown)
- EWhen food is(12 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A good dinner starts long before someone turns on the stove. Rosen connects the meal to the food, the food to the soil, the soil to farming, and farming to a culture that values maintaining its natural resources.
At first, I wonder about the wording: does something have to be either good or bad? What about mediocre food or soil? Read the ordinary contrast in context rather than letting that detour hide the point. Rosen is tracing the conditions needed to get a good meal. The meal depends on suitable food and soil; maintaining that soil depends on good farming; and good farming depends on the culture described at the end.
What we’re looking for
The question asks what follows from Rosen's statements. We'll need to keep the dependencies straight as we compare the choices.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Natural conditions enter through the food and soil. Cultural conditions enter because good farming requires a culture that values maintaining its natural resources. Following Rosen's chain connects both to the preparation of good meals. A doesn't promise that those conditions always produce a wonderful dinner. It says the dinner depends on them, which is the relationship Rosen describes.
- B
Rosen says good farming needs a culture that values maintaining natural resources. B says properly maintaining natural resources needs good farming. Those are different requirements. We haven't been told that every kind of resource maintenance depends on farming, so B doesn't follow from the stated chain.
- C
Rosen tells us we need good farming to maintain good soil. C tells us we need good soil to have good farming. Put the two sentences side by side: farming is required for the soil in the passage; soil is required for the farming in C. The second claim isn't established by the first. We can't get it just by switching the two subjects.
- D
Valuing resource maintenance doesn't guarantee a good cuisine. A society could value the right things and still fail to carry them out, or good ingredients could be prepared badly. Rosen gives requirements for good meals, not a promise that good cultural values automatically deliver them. D also broadens the particular cultural value in the passage into good values generally.
- E
Bad soil could prevent good food, but that doesn't make it the only possible source of bad food. Food grown in good soil could spoil later, for example. We therefore can't work backward from bad food to the specific diagnosis of bad soil and bad farming. E rules out other explanations that Rosen hasn't ruled out.
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